I Won’t Pay Taxes for Whites-Only Schools, Says Robert Purvis

On this date in 1853, Robert Purvis wrote
to the tax collector in Philadelphia to explain why he would not be paying
his taxes to fund a school system that was for white children only:

You called yesterday for the tax upon my property in this Township, which I
shall pay, excepting the “School Tax.” I object to the payment of this tax,
on the ground that my rights as a citizen, and my feelings as a man and a
parent have been grossly outraged in depriving me, in violation of law and
justice, of the benefits of the school system which this tax was designed to
sustain.

I am perfectly aware that all that makes up the character and worth of the
citizens of this township look upon the proscription and expulsion of my
children from the Public School as illegal, and an unjustifiable usurpation
of my right. I have borne this outrage ever since the innovation upon the
usual practice of admitting all the children of the Township into the Public
Schools, and at considerable expense, have been obliged to obtain the
services of private teachers to instruct my children, while my school tax is
greater, with a single exception, than that of any other citizen of the
township.

It is true (and the outrage is made but the more glaring and insulting) I was
informed by a pious Quaker director, with a sanctifying grace, imparting,
doubtless, an unctuous glow to his saintly prejudices, that a school in the
village of Mechanicsville was appropriated for “thine.” The miserable shanty,
with all its appurtenances, on the very line of the township, to which this
benighted follower of George Fox alluded, is, as you know, the most flimsy
and ridiculous sham which any tool of a skin-hating aristocracy could have
resorted to, to cover or protect his servility.

To submit by voluntary payment of the demand is too great an outrage upon
nature, and, with a spirit, thank God, unshackled by this, or any other
wanton and cowardly act, I shall resist this tax, which, before the unjust
exclusion, had always afforded me the highest gratification in paying. With
no other than the best feeling towards yourself, I am forced to this
unpleasant position, in vindication of my rights and personal dignity against
an encroachment upon them as contemptibly mean as it is infamously despotic.

Purvis’s protest was apparently effective, as the school board rescinded its
racial exclusion policy.

This was not the first time Purvis had contemplated tax resistance. In an
1841 letter to the editor to the
Philadelphia Public Ledger, he wrote:

How infamously tyrannical to extort payment for that which we are not
allowed to possess! Can we feel any interest in the honor of a state
which has disgracefully and unjustly dishonored us? Would not resistance by
us to this unjust tax, based upon and demanded from the patriotism
of the people, be in obedience to the principles of justice and right? Let
the depredatory arm of the Commonwealth, through its officers, seize our
goods or even our persons — the sacrifice will be made upon the altar of
humanity. Let that suffice.

According to Margaret Hope Bacon’s But One Race: The Life
of Robert Purvis: “The antiblack elements in the Philadelphia public
reacted swiftly to his letter; the night of its publication his house was
surrounded by an angry mob. Robert Purvis was afraid for the safety of his
family. Fortunately for the Purvis household, but unfortunately for others,
the rumor was spread that there were a large number of armed and dangerous men
in the Purvis house, and the mob turned aside, and vented its anger by burning
a black church in the vicinity.”

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